Well, it's that time of the year here on the East Coast. Sure, I'm not in New England where people travel from miles around to check out the colors of fall. But DC has its own brilliant colors! LOOK!
Haha. Good joke, right? But seriously, check out these colors.
My housemate ran a marathon the other weekend, and we went down to the finish line to see if we could catch him at the end and yell at him (positively, of course). We did not get to see him, as we either missed him, or gave up and left before he passed us. Running is absolutely the worst spectator sport (actually, it isn't quite as bad as XC skiing, why did anyone ever come to our races in high school?! Great, you get to stand out in the cold, waiting who knows how long for someone you know to come gliding by you for about 5 minutes. woopty doo). Anyhow, even though we didn't get to see my housemate, we did get to pass by Arlington National Cemetery, where the colors of fall were once again on display.
These fall colors are exciting for me, as I have missed the best parts of fall (the death and decay of leaves) by being in Minnesota for fall break, during which time all the leaves die and fall of the trees in Grinnell. I would then return to Grinnell, only to hear of all the fall colors back in Minnesota. Not anymore! As a reminder every morning of my fortunes, there is a large tree in front of our yard that, for a solid two weeks, had the most spectacular yellow colors to it.
That brings me to the final part of this blog - my house! I realized that I have not shown the necessary photos of where I am living. So, without further delay:
Here is my street
Here is my house (my room is on the top left side from this view)
To finish, let me give a brief rundown of things in my life right now:
- I am starting "no shave November" on Tuesday. I will be competing against my housemate. The loser of our competition has to make one omelet for the winner. I apologize in advance to those family members who will be seeing me in two weeks. Also, don't worry, I will be thoroughly chronicling this with photographs.
- We are close to getting our publication done in the lab. We just have a few more experiments to run. Our goal is to finish before Christmas-time
- I broke my metro card and am paying for the bus again with my own money. Thus I have been traveling around much less.
- This compounds with the fact that my knee has been hurting me and forcing me to take the metro to work instead of biking.
- I still love having a full-sized bed so much more than a having a twin (sized bed, not the person).
- My experiment in making heirloom beans went pretty well. Though I found out that using 3 serrano peppers really adds a lot of spice to a dish. This experiment started with a visit to this site. Ask gpatude for some great heirloom bean jokes.
- I bought a 23-inch HD monitor for my laptop. This is the first of a series of investments in upgrading the technology I own. The next will most likely be an Xbox 360 (I encourage my KirkTude and DaddyTude to look into this, we could play games online against each other from all three major parts of the country!) The final investment will be a Mac Mini.
- I was an iPod Touch for halloween!!
Much love, paul
